Zachary Quinto or Leonard Nimoy – Which Spock will you be?
Real Time Planning – the How & Why

‘Real-time planning using data’ is a term that is much used nowadays. It refers to the ubiquity of data that is present all around us, and, tapping & using this data for making fast paced, often immediate decisions in the work environment.

To begin with are we really that fast paced? If art imitates life, the answer is yes. Examine Sherlock Holmes before & now… the ‘Star Trek’ we grew with vs now, … the pace is much faster. Even closer home Shahrukh’s Don has to shake a leg harder & run faster than what Mr. Bachchan ever had to do. In our own lives we are doing much more, much faster with the help of technology.

In this fast paced world – it is both difficult to predict how our market interventions will fare – as well as easy to manage swift effective actions. And, that is possible by real-time planning. Real-time planning helps us realize something is wrong before the time to react has past, or identifies opportunities before others can catch on.

For e.g., with real-time planning: a sports channel realized how to position the Australian cricket team for an upcoming series basis prevailing sentiments towards the team; a cola brand understood the relative performance of its TV creatives mid-campaign and changed the weights assigned to them; a watch brand realized that the bounce rate on one of it’s digital platforms was higher than the other & changed the investment skew on the platforms.

The marketplace is getting tougher by the day, and often, swift decisions can make or break the game. And real-time planning whether we like it, or not, is here to stay.
So what should we do?

1. Build your real-time data platforms. There is a lot of trial & error involved to get something that works for your specific needs, so start early than late.

2. Ensure you build in cause & effect between data you collect & KPIs that matter to you

3. Make it meaningful in the real world. Use your systems for actionable insights and act on them. Apple’s success is not because they had great technology, but because they empowered us to navigate the real world with technology in ways we never imagined possible before

It is for us to decide which Spock we want to be - Zachary Quinto’s or Leonard Nimoy’s. Like Sheldon (Big Bang Theory) I too revere Leonard Nimoy, but I do want to be part of the present, not of history!